Fed up with Australian internet speeds that trail those in most of the developed world, Morgan Jaffit turned to a more reliable method of data transfer: the postal system.
Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world have downloaded Hand of Fate, an action video game made by his studio in Brisbane, Defiant Development. But when Defiant worked with an audio designer in Melbourne, more than 1,000 miles away, Mr. Jaffit knew it would be quicker to send a hard drive by road than to upload the files, which could take several days.
"It's really the big file sizes that kill us," said Mr. Jaffit, the company's co-founder and creative director. "When we release an update and there's a small bug, that can kill us by three or four days."
Australia, a wealthy nation with a widely envied quality of life, lags in one essential area of modern life: its internet speed. Eight years after the country began an unprecedented broadband modernization effort that will cost at least 49 billion Australian dollars, or $36 billion, its average internet speed lags that of the United States, most of Western Europe, Japan and South Korea. In the most recent ranking of internet speeds by Akamai, a networking company, Australia came in at an embarrassing No. 51, trailing developing economies like Thailand and Kenya.
(Score: 3, Informative) by kaszz on Saturday May 13 2017, @05:03PM (7 children)
From what I remember it was deliberately derailed by Mr Turner and some telecommunications companies that had other interests.
(Score: 2) by citizenr on Saturday May 13 2017, @07:46PM (1 child)
Exactly.
They build modern nation-wide fiber network ... and put transfer limits on INTERNAL traffic! citing expensive transcontinental transit as the reason :) :):)
Australians got raped in the ass by Telstra and other industry incumbents, cant compete with good old boys!
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday May 14 2017, @10:41AM
How is the options for building your own internet connection with fiber in Australia if you have some neighbors that cooperate and have some money?
In particular the legality to dig cable trenches and their cost. As well as the distance to the nearest POP. Which of course can be monopolized. That can be workaround if one has lots of money by buying sea fiber capacity.
If the state won't do it. It's DIY time.
(Score: 2) by gawdonblue on Sunday May 14 2017, @12:26AM (2 children)
It was deliberately derailed by Mr Trumble.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday May 14 2017, @11:25AM (1 child)
Does he have a real name?
(Score: 2) by gawdonblue on Sunday May 14 2017, @10:17PM
Why yes, he does. He's the Prime Minister of Australia. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=turnbull+trumble&t=lm&ia=images/ [duckduckgo.com]
(Score: 2) by caffeine on Sunday May 14 2017, @04:45AM (1 child)
The claim was that Rupert Murdoch did not want competition from low cost streaming pay tv providers. He had a near monopoly in the pay-tv market with his Foxtel delivered via mostly satellite.
He controls a good percentage of the media here and basically chooses how wins elections.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday May 14 2017, @10:44AM
Time to dislodge him?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday May 13 2017, @05:49PM (4 children)
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 13 2017, @06:37PM (3 children)
Could it be that the two endpoints are just too thrifty to spring for more than basic speed, or is multi-tier service a thing outside the monopolies of the US?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday May 13 2017, @09:58PM (2 children)
"Basic speed": Apparently 9.6Mbps
Even buying "speed boost" or whatever the ISP calls it, only gets you "up to" 100Mbps, but likely doesn't give you anything near that most of the time.
http://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/home-broadband/nbn-speed-packs [optus.com.au]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @02:00AM
In Santa Cruz, California, Right next to Silicon Valley, I get 1.4 Mbps on a cable modem. Seems to work for most of the stuff I need or want to do. I do work, play a couple of multi-player internet games, stream Netflix movies, stream music, 9.6 Mbps sounds great to me.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 14 2017, @02:25AM
Back in the mid 1990s, one of the things that impressed me most about "the internet" was that I was browsing photos from Australian museums, and I didn't even realize that it was coming from Australia at first - it was that seamless and just as fast as any other (38.4Kbaud dialup) site. I thought there was still "dark fiber" everywhere, extra link capacity just waiting for people to install endpoint drivers on it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday May 13 2017, @07:06PM
Of the NBN [theregister.co.uk], not for Australian would-be netizens.
Go back a few years for some real laughs.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday May 13 2017, @11:00PM (1 child)
> "When we release an update and there's a small bug, that can kill us by three or four days."
In situations like that, rsync can be handy. Unsurprisingly, it was invented by Australians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @01:34AM
Was wondering the same thing: What size was this HDD? On AArnet transferring data from Sydney (10gbit) to Canberra takes a few days. 8TB usually takes 2.5 days depending on the number of parallel transfers.
Rsync is the tool if choice for sure! FYI first pass can be sped up with Filezilla.